->"''These were once fertile lands... until weather waged war on man. The seas rose, the sun scorched the Earth, and the people fled... Some... remained behind.''"->-- '''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwkq89gwLfg Opening sequence]]'''

UsefulNotes/AlGore was right, and GlobalWarming hit the Earth. The massive climate shift leaves most of the world desolated, with mankind holed up in small pockets of habitable land. So, what do we do with a [[DeathWorld completely deserted continent]]? [[ThrillSeeker Let's race!]]

This game was produced in 2009 by Asobo Studio and published by Creator/{{Codemasters}}. It features a 5000 square mile map, of which you explore to find challenges and race on to gain Fuel, which you then trade in for better, faster, and stronger vehicles.

Oh, and while you race, you get to deal with rapidly changing weather, which can literally rain on your parade across the wilderness.

The game was not well-received due to some dubious handling models for the road cars in particular, as well as the fact that the giant map is [[ProceduralGeneration procedurally-generated]] except for some key spots, meaning there is nothing but generic terrain and roads that look like one another as far as the eye can see.

----!!Tropes:* AfterTheEnd: The world has been devastated by climate change, reducing humanity to tiny enclaves.* AllOrNothing: You have to get 1st Place to gain anything.* AndYourRewardIsClothes: Winning some races gives you new clothes to dress yourself in.** You can get new paint schemes for your car if you head out into the wildernis and drive for half an hour towards a car wreck.* ArtisticLicenseGeography: what's with all the "rest area" signs on back roads?* CharacterCustomization: Not too extensive, but your clothing can be changed.* {{Checkpoint}}: Obviously.* DifficultyLevels: Which give you differing levels of FUEL for winning.* DoNotTouchTheFunnelCloud: Literally.* FakeDifficulty: Vehicles with terrible steering response, invincible bushes, obstacles placed in the worst possible places...** They're not placed at all. The entire map was randomly generated, then the designers went around it looking for nice places to race at. Only the basic race at each camp is manually created, which is why it is so small and higher quality than the rest.** The road cars are ''intentionally'' hard to drive. Road bikes are much smoother, but the slightest contact with anything causes you to crash.* IdiotProgramming: Other than brightness, the sun and moon are virtually identical. To the point that the moon traverses the sky backwards!* InUniverseGameClock: Racing or free roaming, you have a day/night cycle.* LoadingScreen: Appears when you crash due to the procedurally-generated world; the game has to go back and recalculate the road behind you. Oddly, the loading screen appears the instant you crash or roll over; you do not get to see your car actually wreck.* MarathonLevel: The last Challenge in the game, an Endurance Race on Mt. Rainier, takes ''one hour and ten minutes to complete'', and that's with taking massive shortcuts!** There are two achievements for driving from one corner of the map to the opposite corner. This is a distance of about 170 real life kilometres. Vehicles capable of going from A to B in a straight line usually won't go faster than about 100 kph; anything faster is confined to asphalt roads. As a result, you will be driving for at least an hour and a half, possibly longer if you get bogged down by unpassable cliffs and meandering dirt trails.* MultiPlatform* PostProcessingVideoEffects: Bloom Lighting.* ProceduralGeneration: 14,000 square miles of terrain (about the size of Belgium), barring a few pre-defined landmarks.* SchizophrenicDifficulty: Some levels are super easy and the AI never understand the easiest path, causing you to win by literally a mile, whereas other times the AI seem to take shortcuts that are impossible or drive at absurd speeds that are also not possible.** Their shortcuts are always possible for players to take, even if it requires perfect aim. SchizophrenicDifficulty means you know where the shortcuts are on some tracks (and crucially where you ''cannot'' cut because there's a tree trunk or hill that's just barely too steep) and not on others. Basically if the cut is clean and you don't take it, you will lose. If there is an obstacle and you do take it, you will lose.** On many of the longer point to point races, you can trivially win if you set course for the finish line and just plow straight across the terrain. If you get stuck between trees, restart and take a slightly different route. On the other hand, the developers must love dirt bikes and quads because any vehicle that's restricted to roads is barely faster than the offroad alternative and worse, wipes out badly as soon as you touch a dirt patch which makes them completely useless. Even races where you are forced to use a road car include dirt patches, including one notorious race where your view is also blocked by a sandstorm.** There's one horrible race where you get to drive road bikes on a very tight track. The slightest contact with an opponent or wall kills you, and if you dare to accelerate for more than a split second you completely overshoot the next corner and plow into the wall.* SceneryPorn: This was probably what the developers were going for with that huge map. It usually just results in generic hill upon generic burning forest, but the developers sought out the places where the random number generator did create an awesome view, and marked them with a "lookout point" sign on the map.* ScriptedEvent: Riders of the Storm, Tornado Warning, Twisted Minds, Dark Dust, pretty much any "severe weather" race will have weather knocking obstacles onto the road for you to crash into.* ShoutOut: A lot of the cars have names and designs designed to remind you of something...** A muscle car named [[Film/{{Bullitt}} The Bullet]]** Another named [[Film/MadMax The Enforcer]]** Yet another named [[Series/TheDukesOfHazzard General Custer]]** A F1-like Buggy named [[VideoGame/{{Trackmania}} Trackmaniac]]** A most epic big rig called [[Music/{{ACDC}} Thundertruck]]** A big, military looking mashup SUV called [[Franchise/{{Transformers}} Devastator]]** As for random opponents' names, there's [[VideoGame/AlexKidd Alec Skid]], as well as [[Series/TheBigBangTheory Sheldon Hofstadter]].** And a trophy/achievement called [[VideoGame/TheLegendofZeldaCDiGames "Squadala, We're off!"]].** There's also a Vista Point with the name of [[Franchise/SonictheHedgehog "Blue Hedgehog's Hill"]].* TimeTrial: And these can be downright sadistic.** The large circular track where you drive a rail dragster. If you drive perfectly, you finish with 0.05 seconds to spare.* TheComputerIsACheatingBastard: Sometimes, the AI will fly past you like you are standing still, even though they have ''the same car as you'' and you are going top speed! And to make it one better, they seem to bypass the game's own convoluted physics, causing situations where an AI in a road car (which has little offroad grip and can't go faster than 30 MPH offroad) is bumped off a cliff and ends up ''flying'' back onto the road up the hill and ''gaining'' a position. If you try that in the same car as the AI, you only manage to fall down the entire mountain for ten minutes because it is too steep and you slide down.* VariableMix: Each game song has a beginning part, differing middle parts, and ending part, which play depending on your progress in the race.* ViolationOfCommonSense: Racing during a Tornado Warning, dodging funnel clouds and debris on a narrow dirt path on a hill. You have to be titanium nuts to try this! And to go one better, you are dropped off at the start of the race from a [[RealLife/CoolPlane Chinook Helicopter]]. Mere yards from the tornadoes!* WideOpenSandbox: A '''14,000 square km''' map (which means 118 kilometers per side, that's a lot), featuring Mount Rainier... ''life sized'' and fully driveable.----